The present invention relates to a copying apparatus capable of copying in two colors simultaneously by arbitrarily selecting two developing devices from among three or more developing devices.
The assignee assigned by the present inventor has already developed and proposed a copying apparatus capable of copying in two colors simultaneously by one copying operation, which includes a region designating means for designating, by dividing in a scanning direction of a scanning system a support face for placing an original document thereon into a plurality of copying regions, the copying regions and two developing devices are selectively changed over for drive thereof at a changeover position located at a boundary of the copying regions designated by the region designating means. However, the copying apparatus is provided with only two developing devices. Hence, in the case of copying in two colors simultaneously, the developing devices to be driven are fixed and thus, cannot be operated selectively.
In order to satisfy diversified needs for color copying in response to recent development of color copying technology, a copying apparatus has been developed which is provided with three or more developing devices containing developers of different colors, respectively. Thus, in this copying apparatus, in the case where copying in two colors simultaneously is performed by selecting two of the developing devices, the number of combination of the two selected developing devices is expressed by .sub.N C.sub.2 in which character N denotes an integer not less than 3 and character C denotes a mathematical symbol of combination. Therefore, two developing devices can be arbitrarily selected from among the provided developing devices and are required to be selected.